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Medieval Drama as Documentation: “Real Presence” in the Croxton Conversion of Ser Jonathas the Jewe by the Myracle of the Blissed Sacrament
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2009
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In the fifteenth-century East Anglian play, The Conversion of Ser Jonathas the Jewe by the Myracle of the Blissed Sacrament, five Jews desecrate a host to challenge the Christian doctrine of transubstantiation. In the play's image of Jewish characters, fifteenth-century English Christianity constructed an ethnic, religious, and cultural alterity. A Jewish merchant, Jonathas, bribes a Christian merchant, Aristorius, to steal a consecrated host from a local church. Five Jewish characters then stab the host, nail it to a pillar, boil it, and bake it in an oven over a fire. In this last trial, the oven bursts open to reveal the image of Christ as a bloody child. At the sight of the Christ, and upon hearing his reproach, the Jews confess and are baptized into the Christian faith.
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References
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